


Climbing the Walls

by roguefaerie (samidha)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Background Relationships, Dean Needs Help With Sam, Dean Winchester Needs Help, Dean Winchester is Protective of Sam Winchester, Disability, Disabled Sam Winchester, Episode Related, Episode: s07e17 The Born-Again Identity, Gen, Halloween 2018, Hunter Community, If you want - Freeform, Implied Relationships, Interdependence, Might be a Fragment of a story, Necromancy, Personal Care Assistants, Sam's wall, Samhain 2018, Slow To Update, Tags May Change, This territory is painful for me so I am not sure about this one, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-07
Updated: 2019-01-06
Packaged: 2019-07-27 17:39:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16224050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samidha/pseuds/roguefaerie
Summary: Sam can't be "fixed." Not that easily. Dean's left climbing the walls, and he'll do and try anything. Anything.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This has been languishing in my folder for over a year. Finishing it is an okay project for Samhain.

“I can’t fix it,” Cas says, where they are with Sam, white antiseptic walls and Sam playing keep away with something that isn’t there, shifting and jerking on the bed.

“What do you mean you can’t fix it, Cas, you said you’d at least try,” Dean said.

“I mean that in other probable realities it is possible that I fixed this, in fact in many of them I’m sure it was an available possibility but right here, right now, I cannot fix it.”

“Yeah, that’s not helping, Cas.”

“I am aware of this, Dean.”

Meg traipses back into the room. “Okay, show’s over, boys. It’s now or never that you get him out of here.”

“He’s…” Dean starts to say.

“Now or never, Dean-o.”

Dean really hates that name. Especially on her lips.

*~*~*

They get Sam back to Bobby’s house. It takes both Dean and Cas to carry him as he writhes, still in constant motion and seemingly in pain, like Lucifer is pricking him deliberately all over one stab at a time so he feels them all.

“Now what do we do, Dean?” and normally Dean would have some affection for the angel for making reference to this as a shared experience.

There’s only one issue with that. Sam is and forever will be Dean’s to deal with.

“Yeah, um, Cas, I got him,” Dean says, but he isn’t sure he has him at all.

“You’re going to need help, Dean.”

“He’s my brother.”

*~*~*

Sam has always been Dean’s world, even when that world was shattered in pieces, and it has been many times. Still, this time, he really isn’t sure what to do. So he watches Sam for a while, trying to pick up clues.  
*~*~*

Maybe Sam is talking to himself. Sometimes it seems like he is, words forming on his lips but without sound.

“Hey, Sammy, I’m here.”

Agony shifts across Sam’s face. But it’s the first time that he responds to Dean when he reaches out and Dean puts his hand in Sam’s.

“Okay. Hey. We’re okay.”

They are not okay, neither one. And Sam may never be okay again.

*~*~*

The times that Sam knows where he is are getting a little bit more frequent and a little bit closer together. It’s not much but it’s something. But when he says Dean’s name, there’s no relief in it, only anguish and fear.

“What does it mean if you’re here?” Sam asks.

“I don’t know--this is--you’re safe,” Dean says. But he knows before he finishes the sentence that Sam is gone again.

He thinks back to so many things he’s done, all the times he’s not fought for Sam. He has had many times he’s felt too tired to keep fighting, but it isn’t an excuse. Now they’re here, and Sam is--Sam is slipping. Slipping through the cracks.

*~*~*

The next time Sam surfaces, Dean starts with that: “You’re safe, Sam. I got you. I got you.” But Sam isn’t safe, is he? 

Dean can’t go where Sam is right now.

Dean can’t save Sam.

Hell, he can’t even get Sam to be lucid for more than a few seconds.

“He said you’d say that,” Sam says. And he’s angry.

“I’d be angry too, Sammy. Sammy. Sammy. Sammy. Got you.”

“Dean?” Sam asks. “Sometimes...I see you, Dean.”

Dean hasn’t left Sam’s side in over 72 hours except for absolute necessities.

“I know, Sam. I’m right here. I see you too.”

*~*~*

He isn’t sure if getting Sam back in little snatches is better or worse than the rest of the time. But one thing he remembers acutely is what happened when he left Sam in Bobby’s basement--alone. And he’s never going to do that again.

“Cas. I could use some--”

Wait. Cas said all that probable reality stuff and didn’t help them.

Cas is a freaking celestial being. And he doesn’t know Sam. He knows Sam, but he doesn’t know Sam.

He’s not Sam’s angel. Or whatever. Maybe that was why he went all physics instead of doing anything.

It doesn’t matter. None of it matters. But something occurs to him.

He actually does need help and he needs actual people.

Where the hell is he going to get actual people?

*~*~*

Ellen would know what to do. Jo too. Jesus, Jo. That’s still a knife in the gut, even today, with all thoughts on Sam.

Sam needs….

Sam needs people. More people. More people who can snap him out of this.

*~*~*

 _Ellen and Jo. Ellen and Jo._ He can’t get the thought out of his head around the sounds of Bobby’s empty house settling. He and Cas had found and used the key to get in here, there was nowhere else close enough. Nowhere else safe enough.

But damn if Sam is ever going in that basement room again.

*~*~*

If he’s going to do something, he has to do it fast. He needs people who already know Sam, care for Sam.

And he needs them now.

*~*~*

He prepares all of the sigils and ignores the calls from Bobby, who is back at Hedonism or some nonsense while Sam is dying, and he ignores Cas’ calls too. 

This is his work.

*~*~*

There is an audible whoosh and the green green green of Stephen King Tommyknocker light and he feels sick to his stomach, like maybe Ellen and Jo are about to appear as extras from Beetlejuice and this is all a mistake. Sam would be laughing the laughter of the damned if he could laugh at all right now. _What are you thinking, Dean?_

But when the light dims and the dust settles it’s just Ellen and Jo right in Bobby’s living room and they’re blinking and Dean did it--pissed off another Reaper well and good in patented Winchester form.

*~*~*

“Jesus, Dean,” Ellen says, her face a little dark. “Wasn’t ever expectin’ this.”

“Yeah, well…”

She looks at him and he looks at her. 

“Ellen, it’s Sam.”

And the whole world dissolves and Jo is there, cradling him a little. “Okay, Dean, hey.”

“He’s here but I think he’s gone. Not gone but I can’t-- Ellen… Jo, I can’t, I needed you. I needed family.”

*~*~*

Bobby comes through the front door like a storm, knowing something’s up from the unanswered calls. When he sees Ellen sitting in his front room he blinks hard a few times, then crosses the room to her and takes her in his arms like--

“Get a room,” Dean says, and it’s the closest thing to how he sounded before all this started. “Bobby, it’s Sam. We don’t--I don’t know if we have time-- for--”

“Boy, what did you do? What in the hell did you do?”

*~*~*

“It’s what Cas wouldn’t do, couldn’t do, Bobby. Sam’s… his wall… I…”

They all stand around Sam, who is at least staying on the bed, still writhing in pain from sources they can’t see.

“Bobby, how do we make it stop?” 

“Dean, I’m glad you called for help,” Bobby says tiredly. “Even if it weren’t me. I don’t know the answer, boy. I don’t.”

“We just… We gotta… Sometimes he’s there, Bobby, and we gotta…”

“We might not be able to do it all, Dean. Even all of us. How long they got?”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh, peachy.”


	2. Chapter 2

Dean doesn’t know the rules of his own spell. He just took the raw Winchester power he rarely admits he has access to on his own and he-- _pulled_.

“This is great and all,” Bobby says, “But if you don’t know--”

Jo stands close to Dean, protective, even soft maybe. “We’re here for as long as we are,” she says.

Bobby and Ellen exchange a look. 

Dean’s eyes hold all of the pain of unfinished business and complete uncertainty of what’s happening. “Dean, we might need people--”

“We’ll get hunters,” Dean says, “They have to be hunters.” In his gut he knows this. Once you’re in the life, it doesn’t let you go. "Bobby. Can you call around?”

The group of them are more protective of Dean than brimming over with answers about what to do with Sam, so Dean takes a swig of coffee laced with whiskey and continues his vigil. 

*~*~*

Ellen and Jo can’t make calls, so they cook: hunters’ meals, from cans Bobby has around. They set bowls in front of Dean and he takes bites here and there.

“The Banes twins can come,” Bobby says.

“The who?”

“Tasha’s kids. Oh, hell, Dean. I’m just tryin’ ta find people. And Garth. Have you met Garth?”

“Family reunion?” Ellen says gruffly.

“Okay. Strangers.”

“You wanted people,” Bobby says. “We could put an ad in the paper for real strangers if you want, but I don’t think that’s gonna go the way you want neither, Dean.”

Dean’s heart thuds. “Just, Bobby, how do we get him back?”

“Well, Max is a wit--”

“A what?”

“A witch, Dean. A hunter’s kid and a witch. He has natural talent. Don’t act like you don’t, too. You just raised the dead.”

On the bed, Sam lets out a tortured sound and Dean nods. “Yeah. Okay.”

*~*~*

By the end of the next day, three people Dean’s never met are in the living room. Max has a book out. 

:”Never thought I’d meet the Winchesters like this,” Garth says, and Dean bristles.

“It’s okay,” the girl named Alicia says as she hovers close to her brother. “Our grandmother was in a wheelchair so we--”

Max shuts his book with a clap that sends up a dust cloud and shoots her a look.

Bobby, Jo, Ellen and Dean all look miserable. 

Sam looks like he hasn’t come back to the building.

*~*~*

The three of them get the job by default. They are who showed up, and the three least likely people to freak out when Dean says, Lucifer and that’s about as good a set of criteria as Dean is going to get.

“Have you tried just...pulling,” Max asks. “Or is that how you got….” He gestures around vaguely.

“The dead people. Yeah. I…” Dean leans back, pulls away. “They’re...old family. I....missed them. Thought they’d know what to do.”

“But what if you..pull, on Sam.” Max asks. “I can set up the wards. But you should be the one to go and get him.”

Dean thinks vaguely of how many times he’s been in a scenario like this, or Sam has.

“Yeah,” Dean says. “Okay. I can. I will.”

“All you can do is try. I’ll help.”

“You’re really a witch, huh?”

“Really a witch.”

And so it’s decided.


End file.
